Canadian Trip 30

Canadian Trip 29

Canadian Trip 28

Canadian Trip 27

Canadian Trip 26

Canadian Trip 25

Canadian Trip 24

Canadian Trip 23

Canadian Trip 22

Canadian Trip 21

Toronto’s early 20th-century Beaux Arts Union Station gives you a sense of the wild Canadian landscape that is about to become part of your journey. It hear you first board the train known as ‘The Canadian’.

This is the first leg of the Canadian’s four-night journey between Toronto and Vancouver, and unquestionably one of the world’s great railway journeys. After initial grandstand views of Lake Ontario and the CN Tower, the train heads out through the suburbs before skirting the shore of Kempenfelt Bay on Lake Simcoe. Here rich farmland gives way to rock cuttings and the first of hundreds of lakes interspersed with conifers and deciduous trees that make up the boreal forest.

The importance of the railway here is reflected by the many preserved wayside stations, kept decades after the last trains called there. Many have been turned into local museums, often with a caboose (brake van) alongside. Some communities were so remote that children were taught in a school train that moved along the line, their homework to be done by the next visit.

The train skirts the huge Chapleau Crown Game Preserve, but sightings of native bears, moose or wolves would be unusually lucky. Lumber towns and log cabins flash past, and metallic roars let you know that another river crossing has just passed. These waters were once the province of fur trade ‘voyageurs’, who transported their skins vast distances by manpower. Floatplanes are now moored by lake jetties as a quick means of transport. Shortly after you pass the wood pulping centre that is Sioux Lookout, the train skirts the shore of Lost Lake, which has its shallows dotted by houseboats. As spruce trees give way to the undulating prairie of Manitoba, the sky and distant horizon assume a greater importance. Winnipeg comes into view long before arrival, as it is at the end of a dead straight 88km long section of track. If you travel in autumn, the sky can be filled with formations of waterfowl in unimaginable numbers.

The Canadian runs three times a week in summer which is May–Oct here and twice a week in winter which is the rest of the year. It leaves both ends of the route in the evening and arrives after breakfast on the fifth day. The Toronto to Winnipeg part of the route takes about 34 hours. During the wait at Winnipeg, pay a visit to ‘The Forks’, where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet. It was once a fur trade hub; now it’s home to historic buildings, museums and a vibrant market.

The Canadian must be one of the world’s most cosmopolitan trains and nearly everyone has made a positive choice to be there, so it’s unusually friendly.

We aim to provide accurate and useful information, but if you feel anything provided here is not accurate or out of date, please email us with the address of the page concerned and any comments so we can amend as necessary.

Page added on: 10 October 2018Viewed 324 times since 10 October 2018.

The following photos have been submitted by our villa owners for this article.

We take great care to ensure we have the copyright holder's permission to display each photo. If you believe any of our photos should not be displayed for any reason then please email info@orlandovillas.com with full details, including a link to the photo concerned and we will act on it immediately.

Villa Owners: Upload A Photo To This Article

To upload a photo for consideration, click here. Please only submit photos relevant to this article.

Other Articles Viewed

The following articles were also viewed by people who looked at this one:

Bookmark This Article

These sites allow you to store and share links over the internet. You can share the links with other users or just use them to access your links from any computer you are using. More information is available here.